AMD Mantle Battlefield 4 demo shows 45% performance boost

AMD has demonstrated the Mantle-optimised version of Battlefield 4 and claims it provides up to a 45% performance boost compared to the standard game running on the same hardware.

The demo was shown at the company's press conference at CES 2014 where Matt Skynner, Vice President and General Manager for Graphics, introduced a clip showing a short section taken from the singleplayer campaign where the player is battling across the deck of the USS Valkyrie.

No specifics about the hardware or the game settings were provided about the demo, though it can be seen from the video below that the reported resolution is 1,920 x 1080 (1080p) and that two GPUs are being used to deliver a framerate of generally above 60fps, though the reported framerate does dip to below 40fps on occasion. The game also appears to be running in at least the 'high' graphics mode, judging by the details visible and our experience of the game.

Mantle is the company's new graphics API that it hopes will provide performance improvements for games by allowing more granular access to the company's hardware. Although a proprietary technology, AMD is leveraging the fact it has silicon in both the PS4 and Xbox One to push support for it.

The API is so far being supported in three game engines: the Frostbite 3 Engine of Battlefield 4 and other EA titles, the Asura Engine, and the Nitrous Engine. The resulting games that we know of that will support the API are Battlefield 4, Thief, Star Citizen and Sniper Elite 3, while AMD says there 5 developers involved and 20+ games in total on the horizon.

The full video of AMD's press conference is available below. Skip to 30mins 30secs to see the Battlefield 4 Mantle video.

Despite not knowing the full details of the demo, I think it's worth getting excited over. Extra performance for nothing if your card supports it. I guess your games will be patched and you wont have to buy a new copy?

I'll wait to see exactly what hardware and resolution was used, and how Mantle fares in a wider range of games, before I get overly excited. Also "up to 45% faster" is essentially meaningless - what if the peak frame rate is up 45% momentarily but the average or minimum frame rate is only marginally increased?

Maybe I'm just cynical, but this is just marketing waffle so far. Let's see some proper benchmarking!

It was ran on 2 AMD GPU's possibly some Mid or High range cards, and was ran at 1080p with no info on what detail preset was used.

This was posted on the Battlefield 4 forums on Battlelog with people, claiming it was running on a single AMD R9 290 and a AMD A10 cpu, at 4K Ultra preset.

That would be impossible though considering you only get 50fps at 4K Ultra preset with 3 GTX 780Ti's.

If you watch the HD presentation and skip to where they show the demo of Mantle running, you can see up in the top left that it clearly states Mantle Rendering 2 GPU's 1920x1080 59hz.

Whilst I think Mantle is potentially going to be good and may bring AMD back in to the race in the games that support it, Nvidia cards will be able to use it as well apparently so the performance boost made by Mantle on AMD cards may be wiped out when, they are ran on a Nvidia card but until it's released and people can actually try it we just don't know for sure.

I will wait till I can at least try it on my dad's card and then if I can use on my 780Ti's, I will see how it performs but until then I am not believing what AMD say as after all they said Bulldozer was going, to be the next best thing since sliced bread and look how that turned out.

This is already late by my maths pre 2014 was the supposed launch date for this its now 2014.

Its at the low end where this will be most benefit for the APU race. If its 45% on the high end stuff that already ran it to begin with thats rather pointless. But if its 45% on 2 low end gpus then it could be huge.

Have a 7970 to run it on when it launches in bf4 so we shall see I guess.

To succeed mantle needs to achieve what physics did not and actually be in every game thats made not used by 10 or so games. If that happens AMD has a winner on its hands and will encourage more people to buy there gpus.

What I think will happen AMD sponsored titles will get mantle and everything else wont. Similar story to physics with all nvidia sponsored titles get physics.

Works out at around 20 games a year on both sides. law of averages say 50% of those are rubbish. so 10 games a year on both. Puts in the irelivent catagory just like physics currently is. Its a nice extra but you dont miss if its not there.

Take even the current steam coming soon list mantle is not part of any game in that list. We could even have a situation where the only games that support mantle are on origin store as the first few games are mostly made by EA.

Originally Posted by rolloThis is already late by my maths pre 2014 was the supposed launch date for this its now 2014.

Its at the low end where this will be most benefit for the APU race. If its 45% on the high end stuff that already ran it to begin with thats rather pointless. But if its 45% on 2 low end gpus then it could be huge.

Have a 7970 to run it on when it launches in bf4 so we shall see I guess.

To succeed mantle needs to achieve what physics did not and actually be in every game thats made not used by 10 or so games. If that happens AMD has a winner on its hands and will encourage more people to buy there gpus.

What I think will happen AMD sponsored titles will get mantle and everything else wont. Similar story to physics with all nvidia sponsored titles get physics.

Works out at around 20 games a year on both sides. law of averages say 50% of those are rubbish. so 10 games a year on both. Puts in the irelivent catagory just like physics currently is. Its a nice extra but you dont miss if its not there.

Take even the current steam coming soon list mantle is not part of any game in that list. We could even have a situation where the only games that support mantle are on origin store as the first few games are mostly made by EA.

Disagree. PhysX is a forgettable piece of visual tech - this is a potentially revolutionary performance enhancing piece of middleware. People actually really care about fps - they don't really care about the things that PhysX brings to the table.

Given that it supports Frostbite, and clearly Cryengine (as Star Citizen is using it) - if it really can deliver 45% performance increases in those games - people are going to take notice (as are devs)

Originally Posted by PargeDisagree. PhysX is a forgettable piece of visual tech - this is a potentially revolutionary performance enhancing piece of middleware. People actually really care about fps - they don't really care about the things that PhysX brings to the table.

Given that it supports Frostbite, and clearly Cryengine (as Star Citizen is using it) - if it really can deliver 45% performance increases in those games - people are going to take notice (as are devs)

Indeed . Too many want to instantly bash all things gaming these days.

But this is potentially a game changer, if they can get it up and running. As I understand it, it could give much higher frame rates , but more importantly, eliminate those huge frame rate dips you get in very heavy action, dips that even the best rigs currently suffer from.

Forgettable visual tech what is graphics if its not about visuals, quite a fan of Physx, shame it doesn't run on my GPUs now.

Physx was only problematic when there was a performance hit but games like Batman were all the better for it, without it Batman looked like a last gen console game.

Gotta have all the eye candy but also need enough fps, running a couple of ATi machines and I've not experienced so many quirks/issues with bloomin drivers so I don't hold up much of hope of Mantle being any good out of the gate.

Happy for them to prove me wrong though its sounds like its a thing for low end machines.

so far so good.... really hoping for some extra info on this, but so far this announcement is lining up with what was expected of it.... now just get it out to consumers within the month and nvidia will be thoroughly in the doghouse this gen.

Originally Posted by sandysForgettable visual tech what is graphics if its not about visuals, quite a fan of Physx, shame it doesn't run on my GPUs now.

Physx was only problematic when there was a performance hit but games like Batman were all the better for it, without it Batman looked like a last gen console game.

Gotta have all the eye candy but also need enough fps, running a couple of ATi machines and I've not experienced so many quirks/issues with bloomin drivers so I don't hold up much of hope of Mantle being any good out of the gate.

Happy for them to prove me wrong though its sounds like its a thing for low end machines.

It's more the principle of going low-level on PC and utilising that previously shielded performance . Showing it's not only possible but practical , really PC graphics HW has nowhere else to go.

If DirectX didn't exist today, then no one would create it. Nvidia will likely have to get on board too , using more and more powerful, power eating GPUs and brute force to compensate for DirectX, isn't a good strategy.